Today is the first day of classes back at UMW and I cannot believe how quickly this year has flown by. I definitely understand what my parents meant when they said that as you get older, time passes by more quickly. 🙁

I’m just going to sit here and post more pictures from my Australia adventure to make myself a little bit less sad.

Me by the Lagoon in Cairns City!

Me by the Sydney Opera House. It actually stopped raining for a few minutes so I could have a quality picture!

Dieter and I on the Skyrail to Kuranda over top of the beautiful rainforest.

Well, my mother and I had a fantastic roadtrip and last week in Cairns. I’m currently in the Auckland airport in New Zealand and have found myself completely depressed about the end of my experience. I left so many loved ones at my second home and I don’t want to leave, at all!!!

The internet here is really crappy, so I’ll have to wait to upload more travel pictures until I get home-home. It’s going to be so weird.

I miss my best friends, my boyfriend, and just Cairns in general. I don’t want it to all end!!! 🙁

I am unbelievably stoked about that, hahaha. I have an extreme dislike for the grading system in Australia. I do not think that undergraduate classes should have final exams worth 50% of your total grade…

I only have one exam left and I am beyond happy to be finished with this semester.

This semester has definitely flown by, but I am not nearly finished with my plans in Australia. I have found myself an Australian boyfriend and I am very much falling head over heels for him. 🙂 I’m moving in with him and his family for a couple of weeks, and then my mother is coming to visit in July for three weeks!

Before she visits, my boyfriend (Dieter) and I are going to travel to Japan!! We plan to go to Osaka, Kyoto, and Tokyo. I have always wanted to go to Japan, and right now is the cheapest time to travel. The radiation levels are pretty safe at the moment and I’m willing to take the risk for a 6 day vacation. 🙂

You can bet that I will be blogging about that!

I am returning home to Maryland on August 12th, just a few days before I have to return to UMW. My trip so far has been unbelievable and I don’t want it to end.

I’ll do my best to blog more often now that I don’t have to slave over my classes anymore. I’m excited to be able to relax in paradise. 🙂

This weekend, I enjoyed my very first music festival! I’ve never had the chance to go to one before, so I was definitely pretty excited. I roadtripped with a friend four hours south to Townsville, one of the most highly populated cities in Queensland! As my mother said later, the festival was definitely highly reminiscent of festivals in the ’60s and ’70s. I wanna go back! The weather was so perfect and I had so much fun. 🙂

For my birthday present from my parents, I asked if they would pay for me to go on a liveaboard diving trip over Easter weekend. My trip ended up being for 2 days 1 night. I did six dives, including a night dive, and it was one of the most amazing experiences of my life.

Room number 16 on the liveaboard boat! The room I shared with another girl, Jane, who also happened to be from America. 🙂

Our cute beds!

The view next to my bed.

The sunrise at 6AM outside my window. 🙂

The front of the tshirt I purchased.

The back of the shirt. So adorable! 🙂

I enjoyed all of the dives. They were throughout the two days, so different sea creatures were active at different times. On my last dive, I swam next to a sea turtle and he kept looking at me suspiciously. So cute! The night dive was particularly exciting. I had never done one before so it was an entirely new experience. We all sat underwater near the front of the boat while the crew threw over some meat scraps to feed some white tip reef sharks. It was awesome but scary at the same time because I could only see as much as my flashlight would let me!

The biggest problem is that I now have an outer ear infection. 🙁 Some water must have been leftover in my right ear after my dives. It’s such a horrible pain, and right before my birthday, too!